Uomachi Gintengai is the most famous of Kokura's covered arcades and one of the longest in western Japan. The arcade runs east from Kokura Station, lined with restaurants, izakaya, clothing shops, pachinko parlours and the occasional traditional sweets stall, all under a vaulted glass-and-steel roof that keeps the rain (and the August heat) at bay.
The energy ramps up in the evening when the after-work crowd spills out of the side-street izakaya. It connects via side passages to other arcades — Sun-Road, Tanga, Kyomachi — so it is easy to spend an entire afternoon wandering between them without ever stepping outside.